FairPrice to add recycling machines
Just drop empty tin cans or plastic bottles in and get bottled water coupon
Grace Chua Straits Times 7 May 10;
A VENDING machine at the FairPrice supermarket in Ang Mo Kio Hub swallows tin cans and plastic bottles. It then sorts them, counts them and spits out coupons that can be exchanged for bottled water.
The supermarket chain has three such 'reverse vending' machines, and intends to add another 10 at its outlets to get shoppers into the habit of recycling.
The hardware to separate different sorts of waste, a key problem in Singapore's recycling efforts, is already here, brought in by Wincor Nixdorf, a German firm, and Recycle Management Enterprise, a Singapore firm distributing machines from Norwegian maker Tomra.
Since last September, the three machines, located at FairPrice Ang Mo Kio, Marine Parade and City Square Mall, have collected more than 38,000 bottles and cans, some of which were deposited in bulk by schools.
But the machines are a heavy investment, costing at least $30,000 each. They are, for the moment, not collecting enough recyclables to recoup their cost.
For instance, aluminium cans go for just US$1,000 (S$1,390) a tonne - and it takes 70,000 to 80,000 cans to make up that weight.
Wincor Nixdorf Asia-Pacific vice-president Andrew Phay said the company would welcome bottle-deposit legislation, a proposal the National Environment Agency wants to study.
'Introducing a bottle or container deposit legislation certainly creates a real incentive for people to clean up after themselves,' he said.
In Japanese towns, the municipal government buys these machines from tax dollars or waste collection fees, said Mr Rudy Fang, director of Recycle Management Enterprise.
And many countries in Europe give an incentive to customers to return their cans and bottles through container-deposit laws: A small, refundable 'fee' is included in the price of a canned or bottled drink, and customers get their deposit back by returning the container.
Mr Fang said his company is hoping that firms, such as those selling canned or bottled drinks, will sponsor the machines or take up advertising space to help defray the costs.
Right now, his company says it has two machines with the supermarket to encourage recycling and gain visibility. In return, FairPrice provides the electricity to run the machines.
The Wincor Nixdorf machine at City Square, near Farrer Park, is leased by the supermarket chain. The bottles and cans collected by all three machines go to public waste collectors for recycling.
The concept, however, has still to catch on with more consumers here.
Ang Mo Kio resident Dave Tan, 35, an air force technician, said he has never noticed the machine in FairPrice's Ang Mo Kio Hub supermarket, where it is tucked away in a corner by the store's entrance.
He suggested putting such machines somewhere more prominent, such as outside malls or at bus stops.
Still, he said, getting residents to recycle would take some effort as 'people might not want to take along bags of bottles when they go shopping'.
Food recycling plant going to waste
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 7 May 10;
SINGAPORE's only food recycling plant is wasting away, operating at just half its capacity, two years after it began operations.
IUT Global in Tuas is recycling just 120tonnes to 130 tonnes of waste daily. A vacant lot, ready for further expansion, sits next to the existing factory.
Chief executive and managing director Edwin Khew made no bones about how the plant is losing money.
'It has taken us longer than we expected to get the waste volumes we need to break even,' he said. 'We need to be recycling 150 to 220 tonnes a day to break even... At 300 tonnes, we will start making money.'
IUT can process up to 800 tonnes of organic waste a day, which is more than half what Singapore puts out daily as food waste. Just 13 per cent of Singapore's 0.61 million tonnes of food waste was recycled last year. The target is 30per cent by 2012.
The main challenge is to get those that signed up - such as universities, hotels like the Pan Pacific Singapore, and Ion Orchard and 313@Somerset shopping malls - to understand that they must separate their waste at source.
It took two years and discounted rates, before IUT's vans started picking up pure food waste, with no paper or plastics mixed in.
If straws and plastic cutlery are mixed in with the food waste, it can still be sorted at the plant but this adds to costs as it must be incinerated. It cannot be recycled as the plastics are contaminated by the food and it is too costly to clean.
The food waste goes into a digester and is broken down over about 15 days. The methane gas generated in this process is used to power the plant and the excess of a few 100kw is sold back to the national power grid.
The final product, compost, is given away for free to local farmers, as IUT Global does not generate enough to sell. When the plant is at full capacity, about 6MW of electricity can be generated - enough to power 10,000 homes. This will form part of the company's revenue along with the waste collection contracts.
But there is light at the end of the recycling tunnel. The National Environment Agency has asked for expert advice on how to raise Singapore's recycling rate from the current 57 per cent to 60 per cent target by 2012.
Among other things, the agency is willing to pay for a consultant to come up with ways to make sure commercial, industrial and trade premises keep food waste separate from other types of waste, such as paper and plastic.
'If the Government wants to ensure source segregation, some form of law has to be introduced,' said Mr Khew, 61, who, prior to setting up IUT Global, worked for 30 years for Veolia, the world's largest waste services company.
'If you look at the countries that do it well, they all have some form of law - Japan, China and Korea.'
Not only does wet food waste contaminate potentially recyclable products, but it also takes more energy to burn wet waste in Singapore's incinerators.
Mr Khew said he was not giving up. He said: 'I have put in a lot of effort and I am not going to walk away.
'If we took all food waste out and the recyclables were not contaminated, all that would be left behind for a landfill would be sand, leather and broken glass.'
He added that it may be possible for household food waste to be recycled by his company if there were separate waste chutes in housing estates to gather it in one place.
Pan Pacific Singapore, which has recycled food waste with IUT Global since July last year, used food recycling bins in the staff cafeteria to raise awareness about the programme and get employees to put only food waste into the bins.
'In the first month, the food collected was about 78 per cent pure and by the subsequent month, it was 90 per cent,' said Ms Cheryl Ng, the public relations manager. The hotel recycles between 600kg and 700kg of food daily.
